CITIES DATALEX was born as a joint initiative between the Concepción Arenal Chair of 2030 Agenda and the TotalEnergies Chair of Data Analytics and AI with the aim of providing companies, financial institutions and private organisations that support the actions of public administrations with clear and secure legal information to develop activities that have urban and territorial repercussions.
This new tool provides unified access to regulations, which are currently scattered and widely divided in the various data sources at municipal, regional, state and European level.
It incorporates legal search tools using different indicators, including subjects and items for each municipality and autonomous community. The system is powered with artificial intelligence, in particular with language models (just as ChatGPT), which allow us to make queries on the set of legal documents of interest. In this way, the legal situations of greatest relevance to analysts and users can be identified, with the possibility of responding to customed queries. In addition, due to the fact that regulations can be changeable, the system will be automated to be kept up to date in terms of legislation.
Therefore, CITIES DATALEX is NOT a compilation of laws. It is NOT a simple repository of legal rules. It is something more useful and efficient: It fills a gap in methodology for obtaining SPECIALISED AND INTERCONNECTED NORMATIVE.
Although Spain has databases that provide knowledge of legal systems, including legal systems in urban and territorial matters, the information they offer does not provide a complete picture of which legal rules are especially predisposed to promote, develop and evaluate sustainable and integrated urban development programmes, plans or strategies. They are neither linked to the databases associated with the indicator systems known to date. In turn, these indicator systems either ignore the legal framework altogether, or it is merely anecdotal. Ultimately, the existing databases do not allow an adequate comparison and interconnection between the plural legal norms called to have to be taken into consideration to develop integrated urban actions.
This tool aims to strengthen the capacity of urban and territorial actors (public administrations, companies, social and economic agents), to facilitate decisions in the fulfillment of the SDGs of 2030 Agenda, positioning them in better market conditions from the point of view of sustainability.
In its current state, CITIES DATALEX is a prototype of restricted dissemination, as it is still under development. However, it is expected to be launched soon for use by the university community and professionals related to the sustainability sector.